Category: French Language

Laferrière is my favourite writer in French at the moment. His writing is honest, vivid, brutal and funny. A Haitian-Canadian writer, Laferrière lived in Haiti during the Duvalier regime and only emigrated to Canada in his twenties. Consequently, many of his books are set in Haiti or echo with the remembrance of Haiti and he, himself, or an imagined version of himself, is often the narrator. Le goût des jeunes filles is one of those remembrances, which takes the author back to Haiti in the late sixties when, as an adolescent, he does something which makes him a target for the tonton macoute (a militia of thugs). He hides out in his neighbour’s apartment over a period of days and it is her and her band of friendswho change his life. (submitted by LH)